GCF certification concept

GCF is the abbreviation of global certification forum. Its Chinese translation is the global certification forum. It is an international organization. Its members are composed of 142 operators, 33 terminal manufacturers, testing agencies and testing equipment suppliers. GCF has coordinated the mobile phone conformance test standards, defined a test system to ensure that the mobile phone meets the network deployment, and all member operators agree on this test system. In other words, GCF approval means that all member operators approve the mobile phone, and no additional test is required in the future.

GCF also recognizes test cases and test systems. GCF aims to ensure the global interoperability of terminals through independent authentication process, that is, "tested once, accepted by all". GCF plays a very important role in 3G conformance testing. This is because 3GPP has only formulated relevant test specifications and organizations have written unified test cases, but it has not stipulated when to carry out conformance testing, how to carry out conformance testing, and what is the standard of test compliance. GCF took on this part of the work. GCF has set a series of milestones for conformance testing, developed test cases, planning platform certification process and end product certification and registration process.

However, GCF is not engaged in any testing, but is entrusted to a third-party testing agency for testing. GCF GSM / UTRA working group, application development working group, field test working group and ad hoc working group meet every three months to approve the test results, and test cases and test systems will be approved at the same time. When the test cases and test systems in the industry meet the requirements of each milestone of GCF, the consistency test for terminal equipment in the industry will really start.

GCF approval means that all members of GCF operators are approved. In order to meet the requirements of GCF for WCDMA terminal authentication test, the terminal manufacturer must first make clear what functions and features the terminal supports, so as to form an option table. Then, on the basis of 3GPP Core standard, the option table decides which GCF CC test standard, purpose and method should be selected, and forms a test requirement table. At the same time, according to the option table and 3GPP test standard, the laboratory will develop a consistency evaluation table to reflect the consistency between the terminal and the corresponding test standard; of course, the evaluation focuses on the corresponding test method and test purpose.